Rebecca
My oldest brother Mark was driving Ann Marie and me from Utah to Colorado. When we stopped for lunch I ordered a couple of things from the $.99 value menu. And then Mark ordered a couple of things from the $.99 value menu. And then Ann Marie stepped to the counter and ordered a number three. Mark and I both looked at her, confused, and then asked, “Who do you think you are?”
The audacity. We were a bean burrito/soft taco family. A GMC van at the drive-thru, twenty hamburgers and ten waters, if you don’t want pickles pick them off yourself family. We didn’t order value meals. I thought about that road trip and Annie’s brazen extravagence a couple of months ago as I bit into a peach. We were also a “fruits only when they’re in season” family. To eat a peach in March felt indulgent. Of course, Levi was the one who bought it. I learned not to fight him on these things the night I challenged him for selecting a more expensive breakfast cereal. “I’m thirty and a lawyer” he responded, “I can get whatever cereal I want.”
And though I’d confine him to Malt-o-Meal until he makes partner, I have to admit that this value menu/fruits when they’re in season mentality isn’t actually the moral right, it just feels like it is. Which means that what is really happening is something more like Levi making my life a little bit better, a little bit at a time.
18 comments
Comments feed for this article
April 29, 2009 at 8:27 am
lisapiorczynski
Um… I think you forgot to mention ME in your post. Because I’m pretty sure I made you start buying good butter before you married Levi. Come on, Rebecca. Yesterday’s post was all about giving credit where credit is due.
April 29, 2009 at 8:37 am
Robin
I totally relate to this. I was raised on generic food. Then I married my husband who buys things like Fudge Stripes – name brand. So much better than the store brand.
It took me 20 years but I finally got over my self righteous penny pinching ways. Now we are in a recession and those frugal ways are subconsciously resurfacing.
April 29, 2009 at 8:50 am
Brohammas
you got to go to McDonald’s? Lucky.
April 29, 2009 at 10:03 am
Lauren K
“I’m thirty and a lawyer. I can get whatever cereal I want.” heehee.
Have you tried Chocolate Malt-O-Meal? It’s kind of like indulging appropriately …
April 29, 2009 at 10:40 am
annie
My first major acts of rebellion as a college freshman were (1) buying sugar name-brand cereal and (2) ordering soda, instead of water, at restaurants. It wasn’t long, though, before I realized that I was more of a cream of wheat and tap water kind of girl. And that was fine.
In my adult life, I feel really grateful to have been taught frugality and modest living. I think you’re right Rebecca, frugality doesn’t make us morally supererior, but it certainly makes us better versions of ourselves.
April 29, 2009 at 10:48 am
sarahlolson
I had a roommate move me from margarine (so gross) to butter-buying. Becca Bailey. I was 20, and every time I went to use my margarine (so gross!), I would look at Becca’s lovely pale butter and be wistful. Until one day I realized that, family precedent be darned, I could be a butter buyer too.
Life unfolds. I love it.
April 29, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Ruth
Lisa – what is better butter? Does it have to come from Fairway?
Annie – interesting, isn’t it, how we tend to revert to the way we were raised? I grew up in a health food, made from scratch, frugal family. In college, I went through a serious Rice-a-Roni/sugar cereal phase, but I’ve mostly returned to my roots. It makes for interesting points of conflict with my husband, who grew up in a family that drank soda and always had several kinds of ice cream in the freezer. He’ll go to get a bowl of ice cream, and I’ll look at him with a mixture of confusion and disappointment, saying “But honey, you already had ice cream yesterday.” Or he gets upset because I classify having a soda as a dessert. And whenever I express a food whim, he’ll drop everything so we can go to the store and make it happen….
April 29, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Carla
oh how true this post is.
i couldn’t believe that my in-laws ordered drinks at restaurants, let alone combo meals!
and our first tiff after we married was about buying cereal.
so funny.
April 29, 2009 at 4:05 pm
lisapiorczynski
Ruth,
Nope. But unsalted butter just works so much better when you’re baking/cooking. Land o’ Lakes Unsalted is fine. There are fancier brands out here, but they will start smelling like the fridge after 48 hours, so they aren’t always practical. I was just doing my best to get rid of all the “I can’t believe it’s not butter” stuff out of our fridge.
April 29, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Ruth
Lisa – thanks for the clarification! I just had a moment of panic thinking that friends might be able to taste that my butter is generic…
April 29, 2009 at 6:47 pm
stannyann
Paul laughs when I talk to other ‘oldest children’ who were raised on things like cracked wheat and powdered milk. Well, listen, youngest of 9, we couldn’t just HAVE the fruit snacks, and there WERE no potato chips. I too lived on processed dream food freshman year: Lucky Charms, candy corn, and the fluffiest white bread I could find. Now I eat oatmeal, strawberries, and the heaviest wheat bread I can find; but I have Fruity Pebbles for dessert, and there is always ice cream in my fridge. Rebecca, it’s one of the reasons I love you so, we were raised the same (minus The Jeans)
Paul didn’t know that generic Ziploc bags even existed. Imagine his surprise when Awesome brand bags turned out to be the alternative.
April 29, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Hilary Smoot Zwahlen
Amen to that…I was appalled when my husband refused to eat leftovers…what kind of luxury land was he living in!? But you’re right…slowly but surely I am giving up the “only the value meal” principle.
April 29, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Louise Plummer
I am the oldest in a family of nine and recently I have begun saying that I was raised by my parents in an orphanage. (They’re both dead, so they don’t have to hear me say yet another outrageous thing). I have never cared for that virtuous big family, aren’t we righteous model. I am old enough to be able to say that I didn’t like growing up in a large family. I didn’t like being second mother and I didn’t like being neglected. I didn’t like everything homemade. I didn’t like dishes that didn’t match or never broke even if you hit them with a hammer. I hate all things melamine. I hated sacrificing beauty for practicality. I hated being in a car with ALL of my loved ones. And I despised margarine.
Holy cow, I’m ranting.
I’d rather give up my house than stop going out to eat in fine restaurants.
P.S. I adore my brothers and sisters and we get together and laugh very loudly, but would I want to go back to sharing a bedroom and babysitting the babies. Not on your life. Although I’d love to have my parents come to Sunday dinner again and feed them on my fine china.
April 30, 2009 at 8:42 am
amanda
This cracks me up. I’m usually a name brand kind of gal, but I knew that I was going to have to change my ways after I got married. A month or so after I was married finances were unusually tight (I think it was a week before the paycheck). My husband and I did a trip to the grocery store and in the cereal aisle, he pulled a box of Life cereal and put it in the cart and walked away. I promptly took it out and pulled some generic brand cereal off the shelf. My husband walked back looked at me in frustration and then informed me that we may be poor but we were never going to be too poor for Life cereal. And then he put it back in.
I still remember the look on his face. hilarious.
I still don’t buy brand name butter though.
April 30, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Liz
At fast food restaurants my family always ordered off the value menu and then ordered one drink and one fry to share. When I started going out to eat with my friends I was lost. While we waited in line I would frantically try to find a friend who would be willing to share fries. It never worked, they grew up in combo #3 families.
April 30, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Marci
I can still remember the first time we went through McDonalds and my dad ordered a regular hamburger for me to split with my sister. About the third time we went through McDonalds (I was a HUNGRY teenager by now) I begged my dad to let me have my very own hamburger. He let said o.k. and I can still remember how happy I was to get both of the pickles.
I agree with Louise on the whole babysitting your younger siblings thing. Back in the day before cell phones my mom would tell me to watch everyone and that she’d only be gone for 2 hours. 4 hours later I would be jiggling a screaming baby on my hip and wondering if she’d been in a fatal car crash. Thank you, Louise, for validating many of my feelings about being the oldest.
My husband was the youngest of 8 and he made me buy real butter, real cereal, and took me to restaurants all of the time. He ruined my frugal upbringing and now I’m not sure I can get it back. Economy be darned.
May 1, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Becky in PA
Husbands and name brand cereal. Why is it so important to them? That too was one of our first fights when we were married. Now I buy him poptarts when I want to be nice and then I brag about my scrumptious nutty fruitfilled oatmeal creamed with half and half – no takers yet. The kids though, have to eat oatmeal, generic cereal is a treat. I guess we have to “earn” our right to eat empty calorie foods that don’t fill us up and cost a fortune. Just like we have earn the right to have one beautiful summer day after suffering through long cold winters -previously discussed on the Apron Stage. On the other hand I ordered a value meal the other day as we raced through the drive in. My husband looked at me and said “You have to share your fries.”
May 1, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Sara
We were supposed to bring drinks to a BBQ and I bought the store brand soda, including root beer. My husband was so embarrassed, but we were late so he went with it. Then we got there, and the other couple bringing drinks showed up with IBC Root Beer. Now Spencer insists on supervising when we’re suppossed to contribute anything in public. He says he didn’t see this coming, because my parents buy “good” food. Somehow, he hasn’t made the connection that my parents also have an income, and we don’t. Hmm…
And just to get Annie’s back…. what costs more? Lunchtime value meals, or missing an airplane for a McGriddle Value Meal? Busted, Rebex! Just kidding – You and Ann Marie are both wonderful examples to me of provident living. Thank you!